The Legendary Steve Cropper Talks New LP “Fire It Up’ & Stories Of Otis Redding, Albert King & Stax

What the world needs right now, and is certainly ripe for, is feel-good music. Music like they used to make back in the day, where a good groove was enough to get you through anything. Legendary guitarist Steve Cropper has a new album, Fire It Up, coming out on April 23rd and it’s just what the doctor ordered. Full to the brim with wiggle-butt rhythms, you can’t stop yourself from shimmying when that feel-good energy just overtakes you and you wonder, where has this music been all my life?

Well, it’s been out there but has gotten lost in the shuffle of musical fads throughout the years. Although never completely snuffed out by whatever was hot at the moment, soul has always been the slinky backbone of music. Even The Beatles weren’t immune to it. And Stax Records was its epicenter for many years – Otis Redding, Booker T & The MGs, Albert King, Wilson Pickett, The Mar-Keys all pushed deep-throated vibrations to the forefront, scoring hit songs along the way. And one of the connecting factors among all the artists who recorded there was Steve Cropper.

A Missouri boy who had no electricity until his family moved to Memphis shortly before he hit double-digits, Cropper got his first guitar when he was fourteen. His first band started in high school, became The Mar-Keys and his relationship with Stax Records was born. You can hear Cropper on hundreds of songs from those years in the sixties. You might recognize a few: “Green Onions,” “In The Midnight Hour,” “Dock Of The Bay,” “Soul Man” and King’s “Oh Pretty Woman.”

At 79, that sound has never left him. “For me, songwriting isn’t about the writer as much as the audience, and the artist who will deliver it,” Cropper said when announcing his new album back in January. “It’s made from old grooves, because during a lockdown, you work on stuff that’s been in your head for years,” he continued, explaining how Fire It Up came to life. Working with collaborator Jon Tiven, Cropper not only played guitar but wrote or co-wrote the songs and produced it. From the instrumental “Bush Hog” to the walking wiggle of “Out Of Love” to the spunkiness of the title track, Cropper is bringing all those hummable spices together and for thirteen songs it’s like a succulent lollipop that never goes bland.

Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame and the Songwriters Hall Of Fame, Cropper played the Monterey Pop Festival with Redding, has produced such artists as Jeff Beck and John Mellencamp, and has toured in recent years with the Blues Brothers and Dave Mason.

I spoke with Cropper recently about his life in music.

How have things been going with you, Steve? Enjoying the time off?

It’s kind of good to be off but not off this long (laughs). This is going into the second year. This is crazy. I think our last show was in November of 2019 with Dave Mason. We were doing some makeup gigs. We did Eugene, Oregon, and Seattle, and then we went on up into Vancouver and did a show. So I really haven’t played live since November of 2019.

Your new record, Fire It Up, is so much fun to listen to. Why don’t they make music like this anymore?

Who knows! (laughs) You know, there’s been a lot of transition but I guess the music of today is what the record companies make money off of, and doing it the old way, they don’t make money off of. So I don’t know. But I want to keep it fun. Even at my concerts I’ll say, “I know you guys are restricted in your seats but if you just shake your booty a little bit” (laughs). I had them dancing in the aisles (laughs). The police shut us down but we had everybody up dancing in the aisles. And that’s what it is, making dance music. 

You know, I listen to the radio all the time but I listen to the new stations every now and then, and I don’t really hear anything that you can get up and dance to; unless somebody’s invented a new dance that I don’t know about. Tempos are the same and now they’re getting into a change of tempo. Why would you want to do that? I never have understood that. Even when I was a kid growing up, I didn’t understand something being fast and then slowed down.

How did these songs get started?

Well, initially on these songs it was all about the groove and then Jon [Tiven] said, “What are we going to do with all these songs?” And I said, “I don’t know.” Most of them were written for a Felix Cavaliere project and he decided he didn’t want to finish them up or sing them. Okay (laughs). But he’s still playing on a couple of them and we got his permission and one of them is “She’s So Fine.” 

But part of the excitement was the fact of getting to play again. I made it down to the studio and did my little thing and it would bring back memories when I’d hear the track. I played that? (laughs) These were all just grooves in the back of my head. Most of these songs were played to a loop. Sometimes we had a drummer there but usually it would start with a loop and then pull the loop off and have the drummer come in and overdub on top of the loops. So a lot of this album is made with overdubs but the feel is still there. 

Some of the lead embellishments that I’m doing, I’m hearing the song basically finished for the first time. That’s the way I like to do it, even though I knew the song and knew what to play and where the changes were, cause I did the original. I like hearing a song for the first time. I don’t like sitting at home and working something out and then trying to duplicate that in the studio. Just put it up and play it and let me go with it. If we like it, we’ll keep it; if we don’t, we’ll do something else (laughs). But that’s the way I’ve always worked. You like it, you keep it; you don’t, get rid of it. Send it to magnetic heaven, we call it (laughs). One of these days all those licks we erased will come back to haunt me (laughs). But there are a lot of things that come out today, mixed by somebody else in today’s genre, and if I’d known they were going to do that I would have destroyed those. 

That happened to a lot of Dick Clark shows and he had to go get a judge and get an order to get the guys to stop. And one of the ones, and I talked to him about it, was the Mar-Keys show we did. He didn’t have it anymore. That was one of the ones they destroyed to make more room in their tape room or whatever, their storage closet. You know Booker T & The MGs, a lot of shows that we played we have copies of, but the Mar-Keys we don’t and that was a one-time deal, one of the only TV shows we did. Everything else was a live gig and you didn’t record them in those days.

What can you tell us about “Out Of Love,” because that’s a great walking wiggle song.

(laughs) We should’ve titled the album that, Walking Wiggle (laughs). I don’t know, I’d need to talk to Roger [Reale, singer] about that. It implies that he’s exhausted and tired of being who he is supposed to be. It’s sort of like being out of luck, I guess (laughs). Like “The Go-Getter Is Gone.” I take it as the bread-winner is gone; I’m leaving, I’m out of here, bye (laughs). My favorite song dance-wise, groove-wise, is “I’m Not Havin’ It.” The drums on that are just mindboggling. And the one Anton Fig played on, “Far Away,” is a good one too. 

Which guitar did you use most throughout this album?

Well, it’s the same one I’ve been playing about ten years. It’s a Telecaster-type Peavey played on a bridge pickup. The stuff here that I did on the lead stuff is just a Victoria amp we had in the studio and I just played on top of it and that’s it. What we do is we use a long cord, the amp pretty much stays in the same place it’s always been in, and we just plug it in and I come in the studio and listen to the tracks over the speakers. We don’t have any feedback or anything and that’s good and that’s the way I do it. 

You started playing guitar when you were just a little kid 

By the time I was fourteen, I was ready to tackle the world (laughs). I really was, in my own mind. Of course I couldn’t have made it but I thought I could (laughs). But you know, what’s in my head, sometimes I hum something so simple that it evades most people but I’m just dumb enough to play it and I go for it (laughs).

You’ve said you lived on a farm when you were little and that you didn’t even have electricity. Where were you hearing music?

I wasn’t (laughs). They said, “What did you grow up listening to?” And I said, “Okay, ‘How Much Is That Doggie In The Window,’ that kind of stuff.” (laughs) I really heard music for the first time when I was about ten or eleven, I guess, when I first turned on a radio in Memphis. We didn’t have a radio at the farm cause we didn’t have electricity and the only time we got to hear music was in the car. So we were restricted to Peggy Lee and those kinds of things in West Plains, Missouri. I heard gospel for the first time.

Were you listening to Grand Ole Opry or country early on?

They had what Kentucky called Bluegrass. I don’t know what we were calling it, it was just country music and it was the same thing as Bluegrass. I mean, if you look on the map, it’s almost next door to each other. So I grew up on that kind of music but I never did really play that kind of music. I wrote some songs that could go that way, if you took them that way, which I proved that recently, but I don’t know. I used to go to fairs and stuff and they’d have bands and I heard the Brumley’s and later in life they called him in on a session one time, Tom Brumley, to play steel and I said, “You don’t remember me, I was only fourteen years old or younger.” See, he used to date my aunt and I brought that up and that got his attention (laughs). But they would take me, well, my grandparents made them take me to the fair with them so I got to hear the band play and all that kind of stuff. 

Were you around anyone who played music back then?

I had one uncle, by marriage, dad’s younger sister married Bill and he played piano and fiddle. He bought a guitar because guys would come over on Sunday afternoons and do the sing-a-long and some of them would play guitar but didn’t have one. So he went and bought one for them. That guitar was an acoustic and I used to get it out and pluck it like a rubber band just to hear it vibrate and stuff. But I was about eight or nine years old and that’s what I grew up on. That guitar is now in the Musicians Hall Of Fame, framed and everything, downtown, and everyone that comes to Nashville can look at it. 

Was there a player who impressed you once you got to hearing them on the radio?

Chet Atkins. I was a good friend of his and he was a great guy, just a super guy, Chet Atkins was. And I knew immediately, he’s so good I’ll never be that good so why try to copy the guy that’s so good. I said that about a lot of guys. I knew I’d never be a Les Paul or BB King or anybody else. I sort of went with Bo Diddley a little bit. He was tuned to a chord and played a lot of rhythm and I was really inspired by Bo. I got to meet him and hang out with him and play with him about three or four times onstage. It was a lot of fun. When Rolling Stone came out with their list of top guitar players in the world, or whatever, I was right next to Bo Diddley and that made my whole year right there (laughs). He was just one better. He was #36 and I was #37, something like that. I don’t know where I am now. I shouldn’t even be on the list but I got on there somehow (laughs).

What was it like hearing Otis sing for the first time?

It was pretty impressive. I had never heard anybody with a voice like that. True story, and I sound like I’m making it up but I’m not, but my hair on my arms stood up and I was getting goosebumps, I guess. I couldn’t believe how good he was and I made him stop and he said, “You don’t like it?” And I said, “Man, I love it but I’ll be right back. Jim Stewart has to hear you sing.” So I went and got Jim Stewart. I said, I’m going to take a chance cause I knew I was going to get fired if you disturbed him but I said, “Jim, stop whatever you’re doing and get out here. You got to hear this guy sing.” And he looked at me like he was going to kill me (laughs). I said, “Stop whatever you’re doing and come listen to this guy sing.” 

So he did and Otis’s first one was “These Arms Of Mine” and Jim looked at me and said, “Get the band back together.” He’d already let everybody go, said, “Guys, why don’t you go home, we’re going to let everybody off early today and we’ll just come back tomorrow and try it again.” We were there putting the band that Otis was singing in, Johnny Jenkins & The Pinetoppers, and Jim said to get everybody back cause we’ve got to get this down on tape. Duck Dunn reminded me the day before he passed away, he said, “Remember you came running out on the sidewalk. I was putting my bass in the trunk of the car and you said, ‘Get your bass back out, we got to cut this demo.’” (laughs) Although I had to remind Booker one time, I said, “Booker, we never cut demos.” A demo was an unfinished song, basically, just a singer and a guitar or piano or whatever and that’s a demo. And I said, “Booker, we never cut demos. You could put out whatever we did.” And he agreed, it was true.

A lot of people don’t remember that Otis did “Respect” before Aretha.

Yeah and that was his idea and I did a TV show that was all about the songs and Aretha and they said, “How did you feel the first time you heard ‘Respect’?” “I don’t know, well, that was interesting, they covered a song we did.” They didn’t know Otis had cut it first and that’s Aretha’s big number, basically, made her career. It is what it is but Otis had it first, about a year before, I think. 

I remember I was just finishing getting gas at a filling station when I heard Aretha’s version and I didn’t pull out of the filling station, I just stopped and listened to it. Turned it up. I have told people that anytime you have something that you’re part of, that you played on, a song that you wrote, the first time that you hear it on the radio, that is the most impressive thing you’ll ever do in music in your life, is hearing a song that you had something to do with on the radio. So I do that every time and still to this day I listen to a blues station and they’ll play something that Etta James or somebody cut that I never heard before and turn it up and well, I played on that! (laughs). It’s still exciting. I’m like a kid when that happens: That’s me! I played on that session! So I get just as excited today as I did twenty-five, thirty or forty years ago.

What about “Mr Pitiful”

Oh, that was an idea that come up from a DJ at WDIA and I’m pretty sure that was Moohah Williams. One night I was listening to him on my way home from the studio and he said, “Here’s another one from the great Mr Pitiful.” I’d never heard of him before (laughs) but that’s what he called Otis Redding, Mr Pitiful. So I started singing in the shower the next morning and I picked up Otis at the Holiday Inn and I said, “Otis, I got a great idea for you.” “What is it?” And we finished the song in the car and that was the first thing we cut. While he was teaching the horns what he wanted, I was teaching Duck the bassline. That’s how that came about.

I’ll tell you about one you didn’t ask me about. There is a song that Otis had a hit, “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa.” We had written a different song and to this day I can’t remember what we were writing and he was humming me or giving me ideas for a horn line. When a tenor player is working on his rig he makes these sounds and that’s what Otis did. And I said, “Otis, that’s our song right there.” That was his interpretation of a horn player checking his rig. Now about “These Arms Of Mine,” what you didn’t know and I failed to tell you, Otis from that first song had seventeen in a row that were considered being hit records on the radio. Seventeen in a row: “These Arms Of Mine” to “Dock Of The Bay.”

What about for “In The Midnight Hour.” Was that done when you went to record it?

Yeah, we wrote the song, three of them, the night before. We wrote “Midnight Hour,” “Don’t Fight It,” which Wilson Pickett had basically most of that done, and the third one was “I’m Not Tired.” We cut all three the next day and all three were chart records. Of course, “In The Midnight Hour” being the biggest one.

What was it like at Stax on a daily basis for you? Did you know who you were going to accompany or what you were going to do when you walked in that door every morning?

Pretty much. I knew that day I needed to be editing tapes, mixing or recording an artist. The songs would already be chosen, the keys and all would be done in most cases. Some of the artists we did were hearing stuff for the first time and I remember an album we were doing with Otis, we went up to the record shop and listened to some of the latest hits and one of his biggest records was “Satisfaction” and he couldn’t even remember all the lyrics (laughs). 

You recorded with the fantastic Albert King. What was he like in the studio? 

The first time we recorded him, Al Jackson was his actual producer, and we’re in there recording and working and he’s getting frustrated and I thought he was mad because he couldn’t get the song. And he throws his guitar down, with the volume still up, and I remember taking mine off and going over and turning it down. And he walked out of the studio and I’m thinking, oh my God, the session’s over. Come to find out, you know, Albert couldn’t read or write but he didn’t let anybody know that until the day of this session. Al says, “I’ll be right back” and Al come back a little bit later and he said, “Guys, that’s the end of the session. We’re going to come back tomorrow.” Okay. He stayed up with Albert all night until he learned all those songs and we went in the next day and cut them. Later we did, and I forget what was on that session that day, but it was one of his blues songs. The thing about Albert is we used to take some of his old blues songs that he knew really well and make dance music out of them, “Laundromat Blues” and “Crosscut Saw.”

You produced John Prine’s Common Sense and he covers Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell.” Was that your choice or his?

That was my choice but John Prine was the kind of guy he only did what he wanted to do. He said, “I need some help here. I’ve got a guy named Steve Goodman coming.” He put him on a plane and flew him in and I went out and picked him up and he comes off the plane with an acoustic guitar playing “Green Onions.” (laughs) That blew me away. But that was a fun album and they interviewed John Prine when it hit and they asked him the question, “When you going to cut another record like that in Memphis?” He said, “Never.” (laughs)

 

Portraits by Michael Wilson

Related Content

2 Responses

  1. Know Steve Cropper. Since before. Greenonions. Super nice. Man. He was my brother in law for a long time marr

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

New to Glide

Keep up-to-date with Glide

Twitter